


burenai ai de

by orphan_account



Series: The Learning Curve [3]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Other, Trans Character, asexual character (technically), yeah ... they totally bang
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-30
Updated: 2020-04-30
Packaged: 2021-02-26 19:11:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23933437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: EXPLICIT. FUCKING. YAOIS. ENOUGH SAID.
Relationships: Caliborn/Dirk Strider
Series: The Learning Curve [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1719508
Comments: 4
Kudos: 72





	burenai ai de

PRESENT TIME. PRESENT DAY. IN A DIFFERENT UNIVERSE, BUT NOT VERY...  
** ==> **  
All hell breaks loose on a Sunday.

Usually, like every other fucking day of the week, Sundays are a time reserved for chill-outs and bro-vibes. Things have been quiet since your noxious gaggle of interlopers, who are so obsessed with jacking your swag that they tailed you right into your Final Reward, finally accepted their pathetic inability to scrub you out of paradox space and decided to let Dirk take care of you. Really, you’re the one taking care of Dirk. But none of those cretins need to know that.

Maybe to an untrained set of peepspheres, it would seem as though Dirk is doing most of the caretaking. He looks after you and does the housework. But that is because you are not a custodian, and such tasks are beneath you. Someday, after you’re done with him, you really will take care of the Dirk human, once and for all. Then they’ll be sorry, and you will laugh and laugh.

What you mean when you say you’ll take care of Dirk is that one day, when the two of you are the last surviving sentient life-forms on this awful planet, after you’ve killed everyone else and the two of you can stand together over the wreckage and feel the epic win. When the only suckers left alive are you, a total badass, and your loyal second-in-command, after you have everything you’ve ever wanted. Only then will you pierce the fragile flesh of his soft human throat. You will tear him with your teeth into meaty ribbons. You’re gonna take care of him like a hit-man. Or a mobster. You know, the real way.

All Dirk does is cook, clean up any messes you should make, stop the randos from interfering with your plots, and finance your artistic endeavors. He’s more of a maid than a mafioso. A very clever puppet, who is so well trained that he knows exactly which of his strings you wanted to pull all along before you so much as twitch.

That’s why you and Dirk get along so well. That’s why you’re roommates, and that’s why you’re human boyfriends, too. Because you take care of each other. That’s why it’s in your best interest to not physically threaten the human. Breaking your toys means you won’t get to use them anymore, and anyway you’re mostly positive that you’d emerge victorious if it ever came to blows, but the guy is awfully handy with his Japanese swords.

Usually there’s never so much as a rousing scrimmage in the casa de Calistrider. The two of you don’t even bother with fisticuffs. Except today, all hell has broken loose. Due to circumstances outside of your control, on this unassuming Sunday, you are threatening your partner with extreme violence. He’s being held at pen-point. If you pushed hard enough, you are certain that even the blunt stylus from Strider’s graphics tablet would be able to punch through his thin, membranous mammal skin and fill his stupid brain with lethal stab wounds.

Dirk is looking at you like he’s not impressed.  Do you really think you're going to be able to kill me with a Wacom pen?say his eyes. Under normal circumstances, you would refuse to engage with such petty attempt to make you feel like an idiot, but if you allow your eyes to swivel even minutely away from Dirk's hideously symmetrical face, they risk coming into contact with something more discomfiting by far. 

To really get the picture, maybe you'd better rewind.

It was morning like any other. You breakfasted on a cube of canned processed meat, an earthly delight which you have taken to consuming in bulk. All you need to do is slide the generically shaped meat out of the can and consume it the same way you've seen humans munching away on pieces of watery, bland fruit. Strider refuses to watch you do this. The moment you removed your meal from the pantry, he retreated to his study, where he's been working on artistic commissions since. 

Rise and grind, babe. I’m off to work in the coal mine. Gotta find some way to keep your screaming maw full of chow. He had said to you.

And like a fool, you let him sit down at his desk and open Photoshop. You let him close the door behind himself and begin his vile endeavor.

BRING HOME. LOTS. OF BACON. YOU NASTY PIECE OF TRASH.Was your only entreaty.

All emotions are terrible but regret is especially distasteful to you. Is hindsight ever a fucking bitch. 

You enter his study at 1300 hours, if you want to use inadequate human measures of time to describe when shit happened, which you don't. Your internal timepiece, the most accurate instrument of its kind in all of paradox space, was pointing with both of its hands to blinking marquee reading BOTHER HUMAN O'CLOCK. You pushed through the door like you owned the place, which in spirit you totally did, and do, even if usually you're supposed to knock.

HUMAN. ARE YOU WINNING ANY. BREAD? You’d asked. I DEMAND. THAT YOU SHARE WITH ME. THE FRUITS OF. YOUR LABOR.

Are you sure, bro? It’s hardcore pornograhy.

What a fucking fool. 

HAVE WE NOT BONDED. WITH EACH OTHER. MANY A FUCKING TIME. OVER OUR SHARED PASSION. FOR THE LEWDEST. AND MOST OBSCENE PORNOGRAPHY. ON THE MARKET?  You implore. 

Strider raises one of his pale human eyebrows and obligingly tilts the screen in your direction. 

Dirk’s draftsmanship has the impolite tendency to antagonize your own artistic abilities every time it touches your eyes. Sometimes his lines are almost too exquisitely crafted for your brain to understand. So abstract and flowing, total nonsense that only comes together when you squint. This fuck makes drawing people look easy.

It certainly looked like porn at first glance, but as you studied Strider’s creation at length, confusing details began to clarify. While the humans were definitely engaged in some kind of depraved physical display, you weren’t really feeling the tenderness. It looked more like rough-housing, so totally not pornographic that you could feel your admiration for Dirk sinking lower and lower down the echeladder of your heart the longer you stared. What the fuck is this shit? 

THIS SUCKS. WHERE ARE THEIR CLOTHES?

Dirk gives you a long, peculiar look. 

This ain’t shitty joke porn, bro. Someone on the internet paid top dollar for me to render their original characters en flagrante delicto, and I plan to deliver.

THAT’S STUPID. IF THIS IS. A BUSINESS ENDEAVOR. WHY THE FUCK WOULD YOU NOT BOTHER. TO DRAW ANY CLOTHES? IS THAT NOT. JUST ABOUT AS UNPROFESSIONAL AS IT FUCKING GETS.

Cal.

You narrow your eyes. The way Strider is looking at you, like you're the biggest simpleton he’s ever met, makes you want to tear his limbs off one by one. But when he speaks, his voice is almost, gentle. 

They don’t have any clothes on because they’re having sex.

UH. WHAT?

Our whole porn thing? Yeah, that was just a running gag on my end. Basically a joke that I allowed to go on way too far, because I never thought it would directly affect my life if you somehow developed inaccurate beliefs about human concupiscence.

Dirk sighs, his strange squishy forehead wrinkling into the shape that lets you know he was up in his mind palace, beating the shit out of himself. 

Despite what I have led you to believe, cuddling is pretty much the mildest way that humans show affection for each other. Besides I guess shyly blowing kisses from across a prairie in the springtime. While porn will usually involve a tender caress or two, provided the director believes in foreplay, the majority of what can be defined as pornography involves a wholely differing set of behaviors.

He gestures to the screen. 

For instance, this one human male is ramming this other human male so full of spam porpoise the poor guy can’t even form a coherent sentence. This act of penetration is the key to understanding human porn. Is any of this reaching you?

It's reaching you loud and fucking clear. Like a missile reaches a thriving metropolitan city center and sets that shit on fire, so too are his words are assaulting your emotions and sending them into a raging inferno of betrayal and wrath. 

SO. HUMANS DON’T ACTUALLY GO. FOR JUST CUDDLING. AND WHAT THEY *REALLY* WANT. IS THIS. “PENETRATION”.

You’re so angry you can’t see straight. Rarely since you and the Strider human began cohabiting have you felt a rage whammy this intense. You want to chew through his pretty face like you did your own leg, back in your bedroom. You’re madder at him than you were at the shackle keeping you chained to your sarswapagus. 

Before you can think about how ruinous it might prove to your fate, should you accidentally kill your human with a righteous display of brutality, Dirk’s tablet pen is in your hand, pointed straight at his jugular. 

THAT’S… THAT’S FUCKED UP, BRO!!!!!!!!!!

Strider sighs. 

This is why I was so hesitant to deliver the punchline. I know what's happening on this screen probably looks all kinds of gruesome to you. Obviously we never have to do any of this shit, ourselves.

But what about all the shit that the two of you _had_ done, yourselves? Those nights you spent in dazed state of disbelief as Dirk's palm stroked over your skull, again and again. Cupping every last ounce and gram of your brain matter in one hand like it was a fucking sparrow's egg. The times when his implacable touch was enough to draw humiliating moisture out from your behind your eyejelly, and horror of all horrors, you turned your face into chest and let him _ wipe away your tears_.

Had none of it meant _anything_ to the human? Your hand is shaking violently, each tremble nudging the stylus inexorably towards his doom. You're so angry you can't even scream.

Strider fits his hand around your wrist and eases your hand away from his neck.

Seriously, Cal. I’m fine if our relationship continues the way it is. We can stay chaste as a pair of nuns in a super-cool convent. Honest.

Your devotion to correcting Dirk’s rampant stupidity whenever possible is the only reason you find your voice after all. 

YOU!!! IMBECILE!!!!!! OF COURSE. I WOULD NEVER. CRAM YOUR MEAT CAVITIES. FULL OF SPAM PORPOISE. YOU CRETIN. YOU FUCKING. IMBECILE. YOU ARE STUPIDER. THAN THE UNIVERSE. IS LARGE. AND CONFUSING. YOU ARE SO DUMB. IT WOULD BE HUMANE. TO TAKE YOU OUT BACK. AND PUT A BULLET IN YOUR. USELESS. FUCKING. BRAIN.

Then what’s the problem?

_How_ is he not getting this? Of course you’re pissed off! You offered him the squishiest parts of your fucking soul on a god damn buffet line. In all of its deplorable fragility, its abhorrent, pillowy texture, its maddening tenderness, you handed it to this brainless alien said _bon appetit_. 

There were even times, tracing your claws along the line of Dirk’s delicately furred jaw, when you really thought you were getting somewhere with him, too. Each of his human muscles, completely relaxed. His head lolling on its stalk. Each time, you could have snapped it, but instead you chose not to. 

Ugh. Your least favorite thing in the fucking galaxy is being made to feel like a fool, and regret is what happens when your past self makes a fool out you in the present tense. You should have opened his throat when you had the chance and let his blood pour out all over the floor. 

YOU ARE. A DESPICABLE. FUCKING. SNAKE IN THE GRASS. TURNCOAT. A BETRAYER. OF THE WORST DEGREE. YOU TOOK ADVANTAGE OF MY. OBVIOUS. EMOTIONAL INCAPACITATION. AND USED IT. FOR PRANKS. AND JOKES.

DID IT MEAN NOTHING TO YOU, BRO?

ALL OF OUR PAPPING. AND CARESSING. AND MANLY. BADASS. EXCHANGES OF. PHYSICAL TOUCH?

The human’s hand on your wrist is irritating you, but you can't bring yourself to shake him off. You’re too enraged. He seems to be refusing to meet your aggression head on, anyway, and it’s no fun when you’re the only one losing your shit. His fingers encircle your wrist in the loosest of grips. 

That’s not what I’m saying at all. Our cuddle seshes mean as much to me as they do to you. I wouldn’t do anything I wasn’t a hundred percent invested in, ever. You know that, man.

You pull your arm free so you can wave it at his computer in indignation. 

SO. WHAT’S ALL THIS. THEN???

I just told you. It’s humans having sex. While in the past, we have totally engaged each other in brodacious acts of righteous fondling... that isn't human sex. Don't mean it's worth any less. It's just a different thing altogether.

But we don't need to have sex, ever. Really. Plenty of relationships function without it.

You don’t know why Dirk is trying to hard to dissuade you from having human sex with him. Bringing your face in close to the screen, you examine the mechanics of the human characters’ so-called penetration. It seems to occur hips-to-butt, with a signifcant amount of bodily touching happening extraneously. 

I WOULD NEVER. HAVE HUMAN SEX WITH YOU. YOU FUCKING. IDIOT. YOU ABSOLUTE ROT-HEADED CRETIN. NEVER!

WHATEVER THE HELL. THESE TWO CLOWNS ARE UP TO. YOU CAN REST. FUCKING ASSURED. THAT I THINK IT’S HORSESHIT. AND WOULD NEVER. EVER. PARTAKE. IN SUCH RIDICULOUS ANTICS.

The creases on Strider's forehead form into a new shape that you’re less familiar with. He’s thinking, but you aren’t sure about what. 

Well, cool.

Then he grabs your cheek and gives it a tender pap, causing you to shriek. 

That all you needed, bro? ‘Cause I got some porn to draw.

You abscond from the room with no further debate. Your questions have been answered, for the most part. There’s nothing left to yell about, for now. At your go-ahead, Sunday resumes its customary lackadaisical crawl. 

**==>**

On Tuesday, Dirk is being extra nice to you. Not that this is a problem, in and of itself. You certainly wouldn’t dream of looking a gift box of chocolates in the mouth. And if, while he’s watching your gaming streams with you, instead of mercilessly roasting everything happening onscreen until you chase him from the room, the human wants to wrap his arms around your midsection and watch respectfully without saying a word, then that’s his decision and you certainly aren't gonna complain. 

But on Wednesday, when he wakes you up with a fried breakfast of eggs, sausage and rashers of bacon, the maximum amount of greasy protein you can feasibly cram into the woefully inadequate confines of your digestive tract, your desire not to be manipulated wins out over your desire to eat delicious things. After you’re done licking the bacon grease off of your plate, you confront him. 

JUST WHAT. ARE YOU TRYING TO PULL HERE. STRIDER.

I don’t know what you could possibly mean by that.

He can affect an admirable pantomime of innocence when he wants to, your human, but as always, you’re one step ahead. 

DON’T PRETEND. LIKE YOU ARE STUPID. WHEN I KNOW THAT. IN REALITY. YOU ARE SMART. 

WHY ARE YOU GIVING ME. TREATS. LIKE YOU THINK. I AM SOME KIND OF. FOOD MOTIVATED LAPDOG. WHOSE FAVOR. CAN BE CURRIED. WITH NOTHING MORE. THAN A COUPLE OF CHOICE SNACKS?

As you administer his verbal dressing-down, Strider is carefully watching your tongue while it laves through the tines of your fork. There’s still a tempting morsel of fat hanging in there between tines one and two, but his gaze makes you prickly. You set it down on the table and continue to reprimand him with less vitriol. 

NOT THAT I WILL. REFUSE THE OFFER. OF A FULL ENGLISH BREAKFAST. IF IT SHOWS UP. UNINVITED. AND DEMANDS. A MINUTE OF MY TIME.

Dirk blows breath out of all his face-holes like he thinks you’re full of shit. Well, shows what he knows. You’re full of bacon. 

He ceases his wordmaking long enough that you lose interest and resume your ministrations on the feeding utensil. It has withheld from you its delicious greases long enough already, and unlike someone else you could mention who is sitting in the kitchen with you, a Lord of Time knows the value of his aspect. You live your days like it’s a shitty thing to waste. 

Strider only breaks his silence once your mouth is too busy stripping sodium off of steel-based alloy to formulate a response. He probably planned this, but really you are the victor. After a brief confrontation with your tongue, the glob of grease releases from its hideaway and ascends willingly down your throat. Success. 

Have you given any further thought to the topics we broached this weekend?

The fork is removed from your gullet and you berate Strider with a mighty roll on the part of your peepers. 

ENOUGH. TO KNOW. THAT I HAD NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT. 

What do you mean by that?

I MEAN. THAT MY CONFIDENCE. IN THE SANCTITY. OF OUR BRO-CUDDLES. HAS BEEN SUFFICIENTLY RESTORED. AND I WILL NOT HAVE. TO MURDER YOU IMMINENTLY. AT LEAST. NOT BECAUSE OF. THIS ISSUE. IN PARTICULAR.

You’re licking the grease off your hands now, and Dirk is staring at you with his forehead wrinkled into what resembles some kind of pictographic logogram, frustratingly obscure in its meaning. Dirk’s human forehead can be a major cause of consternation for you. It’s like when a work of art is too complex for your eyes to decode and the lines all fall to dissolution, or when Strider is reading his foreign language comics and you try to get a peek from over his shoulder. The speech bubbles are always full of lines which obviously follow some sort of pattern, but remain totally fucking unintelligible no matter how long you squint. 

You finish cleaning off the claws on your left hand, and start in on your right. Dessert is your favorite part of any meal, even breakfast. Curiously, underneath his fragile epidermis, the tiny capillaries in Dirk’s are face filling up with hot, salty blood. Dude’s looking a little flushed. 

But have you given any more thought to… You know.

WHAT ELSE. IS THERE. TO EVEN. FUCKING. THINK ABOUT?

What I was talking about. Us... _not_ having human sex.

WHY. WOULD I NEED TO THINK ABOUT THAT. NOT HAVING HUMAN SEX IS EASY. IT TAKES. NO WORK AT ALL. I DON’T EVEN *HAVE* ANY. WEIRD MEATY BITS. BETWEEN MY LEGS. THAT I NEED TO CONCENTRATE. ON KEEPING. INSIDE OF MY PANTS. 

Truthfully, on Monday, at 2300 human hours, you’d let your curiosity get the best of you and took to the web. 

Dirk wasn’t lying when he told you that everything you knew about pornography was a lie. Most of the content you find, and there is a truly excessive number of clips online depicting this solitary act, fucking terabytes of repetitive, grainy .mpegs, was so lacking in tenderness that it legitimately made you yawn. 

Sure, the wet, freaky interplay between those confusing arrangements of skin that humans keep between their legs is pretty offputting. For some moronic fucking reason you assumed that humans looked pretty normal down there, and it is kind of revolting to picture, between the thighs of each and every human you meet, bulbous organs that invariably resemble deli meats. Salamis and pastramis coming together in violent union; once the squishy way it looks doesn’t gross you out anymore, you’re bored shitless. 

There were also a number forums online, with questionably helpful diagrams and educational networks of dubious authenticity. By posting in all-caps enough times with enough vigor, you were able to wring a few satisfactory answers out of the internet’s irrelevant denizens. As usual, half the losers who responded to your posts thought you were a troll. You ran out of patience trying to explain that you’re a fucking cherub, not a troll, it’s a different fucking thing, and let’s just say your rage gland got a nice workout that night.

Dirk’s skin seems to be in the throes of a grotesque alien transformation, deepening in hue. You remove your mouth from your wrist and shoot him a reproachful glare. 

WHY ARE YOU. SWEATING.

I’m not sweating.

WHY ARE YOU SWEATING. *AND* LYING? I CAN SEE. YOUR DECEIT. AS CLEARLY AS I CAN SEE. THE FOUL-SMELLING PATCHES. OF MOISTURE. FORMING ON YOUR UGLY SHIRT.

...Would you ever -- do that, with me, though?

Now your interest has really been piqued. Dirk is more unsure than you can remember seeing him, ever. Figures that you can run the dude through as many violent, strategic mindgames as you want and what really makes him squirm is some fake problem with details that don’t fucking matter at all. 

I DO NOT. POSSESS. A HUMAN MEMBER. WITH WHICH. TO PENETRATE. YOUR MAIDENHOOD. SO. I GUESS FUCKING NOT?

Dirk groans.

Obviously you have a very shallow understanding of the topic. I can’t fucking talk to you about carnal acts when you’re all, weirdly innocent and shit. I can’t help feeling like I’m taking advantage of you or something.

TAKING ADVANTAGE? OF ME??? THAT’S THE STUPIDEST THING. I HAVE EVER. HEARD YOU. FUCKING SAY. IN MY LIFE.

WHICH. MIGHT I REMIND YOU. HAS BEEN. EQUALLY AS LONG AS YOURS. WITH A LAPSE OF MERE. FUCKING. MONTHS. SEPARATING THE DATES. OF OUR BIRTHS.

But. you’re just so -- little. 

Strider must see the way you gnash your teeth at his insinuation that you’re anything less than terrible and mighty, because he raises his hands up, palms facing you. A placating gesture that, over time, you’ve been conditioned to heed. The human’s livelihood is safe, for now, if only because of its vital role in allowing him to speak.

So maybe you aren’t stupid the way everyone else thinks you’re stupid. But there's still a lot of shit concerning my species that you’re straight up ignorant about. Between the two of us, honestly, there’s more ignorance than you could shake a fucking stick at. The tracks of this fucking trainwreck run directly over a minefield, absolutely fraught with pockets of mutual cultural illiteracy, just waiting to blow. 

It’s a good day when _you’re_ the one who gets to look at _Dirk_ like you’re not fucking impressed. You take advantage of this privilege mightily.

He sighs.

I guess I ended up feeding you more bullshit, in the end, when I tried to explain earlier. So let’s clear this shit up once and for all.

Human sex isn’t actually about penetration. Not really. That was something of a gross oversimplification on my part. Shit transcends gross; nobody in their right mind would touch it unless they were wearing a god-damn hazmat suit. It's a big fucking mistake to define an extremely complex social and biological act using only one of its possible methodologies.

A more accurate way to delineate the objectives of human concupiscence would probably be, humans do it to achieve _orgasm._

OKAY. COOL. SO JUST THROW ANOTHER WORD AT ME. THAT I HAVE NEVER HEARD BEFORE. AND EXPECT ME. TO KNOW WHAT THE FUCK. IT IS. THAT YOU’RE SAYING.

I’m getting there, dude. Hold your fuckin' horses.

He grimaces, visibly gathering his thoughts, and after a measured breath, he recommences his treatise.

Okay. So.

Human beings have several hundred peripheral nerve endings. Generally located in our dermis, these nerves receive sensory input and channel it to our brains. Pain, pleasure, all of it. Nerves are what tell a human that it’s bleeding when it gets stabbed.

These nerve endings are pretty evenly distributed throughout the body, with a higher concentration in the hands, feet, and in the skin surrounding vital organs. Y’know, places where extra dexterity is needed, or else areas you really don’t want getting damaged.

If you measure these things in nerve endings, which is a thing you very fucking reasonably could do, then there’s pretty much no human organ so evolutionarily vital as the junk in our trunks. 

Our species has evolved genitalia with a concentration of super-charged nerve endings, situated exclusively between our legs, so egregiously out of proportion with the rest of our bodies that we have to be careful not to touch ourselves down there, ever, really, unless we’re alone. Or with a partner.

This allocation of resources might seem frivolous at first glance, but it is a means to an end. It’s a carrot on a stick, a biological pleasure incentive for us mammals to spend our precious time figuring out new ways to rub our crotches together. The more crotch-on-crotch time we schedule, the likelier it statistically becomes that a transfer of genetic material will occur. Which means babies, which means the continued survival of our species, hurrah. 

Penetration is the most sure-fire way to make a baby. Pretty straightforward stuff: just get one set of zygotes as close to the other set of zygotes as you physically can, and let it rip. 

But believe it or not, biology ended up losing this fight pretty disastrously. Knockin' boots ended up feeling way too awesome for us to only partake if we wanted a tiny screaming human to take care of nine months later. Pretty much every human society hopped on the reproductive contraception bandwagon, leaving our species to devolve obsessively into constant acts of biologically redundant humping.

To reduce human concupiscence to penetration discounts those sex acts that don’t yield reproductive benefits at all. Like when two male humans decide to make it with each other. You can pump out as many messy loads of zygote as you want, but it’ll end up getting dry and crusty on the bed-sheets if there's nothing to fertilize.

Or, and if you’re following this line of reasoning at fucking all then I guess you know where I'm going here, if members of two reproductively incompatible species, for whatever reason, decide they wanna bang each other.

Sometimes penetration isn’t a feasible option, and yet the integrity of the union remains ironclad. 

Your eyes feel dizzy in their sockets from all the blinking you’ve been doing in the Dirk human’s direction. All four of your eyelids have been run absolutely ragged trying to keep up with his awful speech. Even if the human, at times, was managing to make something that resembled sense, you still don’t like the feeling of your brain twinging at the introduction of all these foreign facts.

...SO *THAT’S* WHY. THERE ARE SO. GOD DAMN. FUCKING. MANY. OF YOU FREAKS.

IF I WANTED. TO MAKE A NEW CHERUB. I WOULD LITERALLY. HAVE TO. SEARCH OUT A MEMBER OF MY SPECIES. WHICH IS A. METRIC SHIT TON. OF EFFORT. THAT I ALREADY. CAN'T AFFORD. TO SPARE.

THEN AFTER THAT. I WOULD HAVE TO PURSUE HER. FOR LIGHT YEARS. AND EVENTUALLY. WE WOULD BOTH TURN INTO. HUGE SNAKES. AND DIE.

BESIDES. AS LONG AS I SURVIVE. FOREVER. THERE IS NO WAY. IN HELL. MY SPECIES CAN DIE OFF.

For the duration of Dirk's monologue, his voice stayed put in its normal confident register, and as he spoke his blotchy blood-flush was even beginning to recede. Now he’s back to looking ruddy and uncertain.

Maybe I’m still oversimplifying. We really can’t have these conversations using specifics at all, can we, or our whole rhetoric comes apart at the seams.

The real reason humans stay bumping uglies, is ‘cause it’s a very real way that we, as a species, express love. Or, it can be. Remember what I told you about nerve endings, dude. There’s a reason that, even in the heat of battle, it’s considered dishonest to go for the groin. The act of touching the whole fucking gamut between your knees is considered, to humans, an extremely significant cultural... taboo.

Letting someone into that danger zone? It’s an act of vulnerability. It’s something you only do if you trust someone. If you’re cool with them seeing you, exactly how you are, no holds barred.

You’re silent, mind racing dizzily at the thought of _taboo_. How the word seemed to fall out of his lips from forty stories high and hit you on the head with a ‘clang’, like a cartoon piano. 

Will this bastard ever cease his attempts at manipulation? Your throat feels squeezed. Your chest feels absolutely obscene.

Dirk’s face softens, and he rises from his seat. On his way out of the room, he lightly rubs his hand over your skull. One brisk, glancing cup of his palm around the dome. 

Think about it, will you? 

**==> **

undyingUmbrage [UU] began pestering  timeausTestified [TT]

UU: DIRK.  
UU: I HAVE. MADE A DECISION.  
UU: WE ARE GOING. TO HAVE.  
UU: SUCH. INCREDIBLY. RANDY. HUMAN. SEXUAL RELATIONS.  
UU: THAT IT. WILL MAKE. YOUR FUCKING. HEAD. SPIN.  
UU: YOU MIGHT. EVEN.  
UU: DIE.  
UU: SO GET READY. YOU PIECE. OF GARBAGE.  
TT: Well alright, then.

**==>**

Except the human sex doesn't actually happen. Not on Thursday, or Friday, or even Saturday. For three whole days, since you gathered every bit of wherewithal you picked up over the course your unbelievably awesome career as a villain and sent Strider a jeer communicating your willingness to cooperate with his plot, you've been a total fucking mess of nerves. Meanwhile, Dirk has been acting completely. Fucking. Normal. 

It’s driving you bananas, and the more batshit you become, the more normal Dirk acts. By Saturday evening, you’re practically beside yourself with apprehension, peeking around every corner to make sure Dirk isn’t lurking behind, sans pants and in the throes of a human orgasm. Meanwhile _Strider_ has the fucking audacity to continue his activities at the same steady, plodding pace as ever. Sitting his meager ass-bones on comfortable platforms, typing things on laptops, reading through pages of text, not a care in the fucking world. 

It's been whole fucking _week_ since this awful fanfiction began, practically a slow-burn. You are not widely known on account of your patience.

After seven terrible days, Dirk invites you into his bedroom.

**==>**

You never really set foot in Dirk’s room. If you did, then you know he’d just go in your room right back, and if he went in your room you’d have to shoot him full of bullets until he looked like a reef-dwelling invertebrate of the phylum Porifera, until he was absolutely spongy with blood. And that wouldn't suit your purposes at all. 

It’s kinda small, less generously apportioned than your quarters, for sure. Not a lot of furniture. Just a bed piled high with dingy blankets, assorted pillows and plushies, an open closet and laundry scattered everywhere. Dirk is seated on the edge of the bed, his legs crossed at the knee. He nods to a chair, which has been placed approximately two feet away from his knees, back towards the wall. 

You sit. 

I’m going to touch myself now. 

You are going to keep any snarky comments that might cross your mind _strictly_ to your fucking self. As a matter of fact, I'm issuing a blanket rule of no talking. 

I’m not sure if I want you to touch me, at all. You are certainly under no obligation to do so. If the desire should arise, you can ask permission. Maybe I’ll say yes.

You feel one of your eyebrows creep up your forehead in indignation. Does he really expect you to just sit this one out? Be a fucking spectator, when obviously you’re the main character and to hell with everyone else? 

But... Strider’s uncertainty is palpable, here in his close, dank, undecorated bedroom. The evening light is throwing musty slats of sunshine onto the wall behind you. He looks tousled, almost bashful. The moments when your human seems like less of an untouchable godhead and more of a bedraggled animal are sometimes the only moments that seem to be worth anything at all. 

You nod, and Strider eases himself backwards onto his heap of unclean bedding. 

He doesn’t remove his clothes. Still trussed up tight in his layered muscle-tees with the high-rise necks, his modesty preserved by a raggedy pair of track pants, Dirk reclines, breathing slowly. Staring at you. 

His hand is resting on his stomach, conspicuously still, jarringly un-gloved. Half of his palm rests on top of fabric; the other half is touching a bare brown strip of skin, just above his waistband. His legs are stretched out in front of him, slightly spread. 

In any other situation, you wouldn't hesitate to let Dirk know about the fire ants raising brutal fucking rumpus in your pants. And seriously, you’re so impatient right now it kind of makes you want to scream. Watching him lie there, supine and inert, staring you defiantly down from behind his triangle shades. 

But something about the quality of the very air keeps you trapped in your seat. Dirk’s breathing is audible, conscientiously steady. There is the subtle copper tang of human blood, and some other meaty scent, diffusing softly into the dusty room. 

Dirk’s fingers dip beneath his waistband. 

You watch the shapes that his knuckles make, pressing sharply their forms in relief through the black fabric of his pants. His hand remains there, still, for a long moment, while something about Dirk’s breathing gradually shifts. 

Fear, is that what you’re smelling? Mammals have certain physiological giveaways, tells with the potential to clue omniscient demiurges such as yourself in on their emotional state. What stains the back of your throat tastes _similar_ to human fear, enough so that you find yourself swallowing, trying to chase that hint of flavor. But it isn't. Not quite. 

You can't follow the exact movements of his hand as it fiddles by his groin; you have no real desire to. What's easier to observe, what you can't help observing, is the change in Dirk's posture, once his fingers really start moving. After so many awful, boring minutes of inaction, your eyes are hungry for the jump of his muscles, beneath his skin. You watch the tendons rearrange themselves in his forearm. The rippling, twitching tension of his manly abs. 

As you spectate, time feels increasingly devoid of meaning. For who even knows how many minutes, Dirk lies there, barely moving, and you watch, inexplicably rapt. Gradual shudders pass through his frame. If you sped up the footage, he’d be trembling piteously, shaking like a leaf. But he’s not. 

Dirk is coiling, sinuously, snake-like, almost imperceptibly. His hips are making odd jerking motions, just on the verge of control. His teeth are grinding against each other. Under his thin epidermis, a layer of organic matter less than ten cells thick, his blood is thundering. So very near, in proximity, to the thin air between you, but he isn’t even bleeding. He’s not in pain. 

Why does the ripple of his arm seem to catch your oglespheres and hold them at gunpoint? Those puppet-strings of tendon, which move his fingers. His fingers, which as they move in his pants seem in turn to be moving every other muscle in his body. What about their motion feels so vital that you physically can’t look away? Where the fuck is the _drama_? It defies any kind of fucking logic. And yet. Still. 

You're not bored, but you’re overpoweringly restless. The longer you keep still, the more difficult it becomes to do, until your traitorous body, overcome with jitters, moves to the edge of Dirk's bed without your say-so. Some unseen, malevolent force obliges you to kneel on the mattress, hands on your knees, and lean forwards to get a better look at your human. 

He’s looking back at you, not moving his arm anymore. So fucking uncertain, it makes you want to laugh in his ugly face. It makes you ruinously reluctant to break the silence. 

Slowly, so he doesn’t have any reason to make you stop, you reach out and pluck his sunglasses off his face. He lets you take them. Muscles drawn so tight he's practically immobile, focus drawn so far away, Dirk barely stirs. 

You were right; the human blood-rush is especially apparent on his cheeks, where the sunglasses usually hide the thinnest skin of all. Strider's blood in disarray, so agitated you can nearly taste it. 

His eyes are full of confusing human emotion and delicious vulnerability. Dirk’s skull tips back. The ropy, jagged scar that encircles his neck doesn’t stretch like the rest of his skin, plays in disorienting ripples over the contours of his many tensing cords. You watch it tremble as his voicebox vibrates with a groan, as the machinery of his throat works double-time. 

His arm begins to move again. You listen to his little huffing noises, the way entropy overwhelms the rhythm of his breaths until he’s panting like he’s been sprinting. Like he’s fighting for his life, but it’s so. Fucking. Tender. 

You realize, as you tilt your head down and open your mouth, that Dirk told you to say something, if you wanted to touch him. But he also said no talking, and you're certain that if you opened your mouth right now, you’d say something wrong. It is imperative that Strider stays like this, with his eyes screwed shut, his mouth open just a little bit, vertebrae contorted into a tense bow curve. 

Besides, the man is a goddamn ninja. You know he feels you moving, the shift of his soft mattress under your knees. He opens his eyes when you’re leaning in close enough for the puff of his respiration to make your eyelashes sway. His lips draw apart, close around a groan, which he chokes on. You can hear the swishy fabric of his pants moving fast, somewhere far off below where the two of you are making eye contact. 

His chin draws up, shoulders pressing back into the pillows hard. You open your jaw as wide as it will go, fit the tips of your fangs around his long, soft throat. Against your prehensile tongue, the freight train of his heartbeat is shooting right off the rails. 

Dirk’s hand, the one that isn’t in his pants, shoots upwards from where it’s been clenched in the sheets at his side and snaps up a handful of your shirt. He gives a little cry, so soft, like he’s been stabbed, but because of circumstances undeniably too badass to get into right now, he isn't able to make a sound. Like a warrior trying to hide the fact that he's been mortally wounded, a wounded little shout. There is so much feeling, pain-adjacent in its tenor while at the same time so confoundingly tender that it seems to burn, _so much everything_, crammed into one note that sustains for less than two seconds. 

All of Dirk's muscles all give at once. He relaxes down towards gravity, a puppet with its strings cut. His hand slides out of his pants and back into view. You gingerly remove your teeth from his neck, use your hand to ease your jaw back hinge-ways. 

He spends a couple seconds panting up at the ceiling. Wasted time, but for once, you respect his sensibility when it comes to moment allocation. 

You kind of need a moment, too. 

After a while, you clock him staring up at you. His eyes are nearly shut. His head has nearly been swallowed whole by the extravagant jumble of pillows he keeps around. Once Dirk sees you looking back, he grabs your arm and tugs you down into the sheets. 

Thanks, Cal. 

You nod your assent into Dirk's clavicle. Only after you squeeze your eyes shut and clear your voice mightily does your shout-box consent to speech. 

YEAH. BRO. EVEN I CAN ADMIT. THAT SHIT WAS PRETTY. FUCKING. TENDERRRRR.   
**==>**

**Author's Note:**

> enjoy this ~intermission~ dear readers! the title is from a hatsune miku song produced by MitchieM. while tlc vers takes place on regular old earth C, in the timeline where calliope prevailed... in this installment, i guess caliborn's here? yeah, i dunno what to tell you. let's call it a side story and leave it at that. this fic felt thematically relevant... and it's yaoi!!! what more do u want! 
> 
> [if anyone's wondering, i'm gonna be writing about rose after this, then as a grand finale..... miz june! thank you to everyone who reads and comments! it means the world :o) <3 ]


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